


Murdock v Depression

by tiredRobin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Hurt/No Comfort, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Matt v Depression, Post-Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02 and 03 barely exist., Whump, it’s not super bad foggy just doesn’t realize somethings up and matt’s too dumb to say anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-11 18:29:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18429692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredRobin/pseuds/tiredRobin
Summary: Old words, old thoughts, touched upon and stacked upon and weighing like a thousand hands on his flesh. Weighing like the Devil beneath his skin. They’re words he can only manage to say behind a confessional curtain or in his prayers.





	1. Ring Ring Ring Goes the Telephone

**Author's Note:**

> i almost want to say that there’s VERY lightly implied past sexual abuse, but the single line is most likely so subtle that literally no one but me actually gives it any weight. but, uh, the... intention is there? if that means anything?????
> 
> (edit: this was my endnote, but it’ll keep showing up at the end of every chapter! so. let’s just stick that here.)
> 
>  
> 
> i write a lot of short ficlets! i have so many! i don’t post any of them ever but i’m honestly a fan of this ones shape, so. here it is!
> 
> i’m having vague thoughts of making it multichapter. VAGUE thoughts. so vague that they may as well not count for anything, but it’s sort of there, and my impulse control is nonexistent so i am telling you all about these vague thoughts. because, see, foggy is Upset, and because he is upset he’s maybe not quite as attentive to all of matt’s signs as he normally is, so matt’s starting to spiral and foggy’s
> 
> not paying a lot of attention to that, exactly. 
> 
> and i don’t think foggy is at all a bad friend and i don’t think it’s his Duty to clean matt up when matt gets dirty. but i am just a sucker for whump, okay, and hurt/comfort, and for friends reshaping their damaged friendship so that they can move on. i LOVE that. and i maybe want to write more on it, possibly. whether or not it’s presentable to the general public is a whole other story.

“I’m just,” Matt starts, but the rest of the sentence dies somewhere between his throat and his cracked lips. He doesn’t know what he is. He doesn’t know. 

Or, he does, but that’s all old news. Old words, old thoughts, touched upon and stacked upon and weighing like a thousand hands on his flesh. Weighing like the Devil beneath his skin. They’re words he can only manage to say behind a confessional curtain or in his prayers. They are a constant. Matt knows what he is. Foggy knows now, too, and he’s still angry. Matt doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. The anger usually stings.

“You’re just what, buddy?” Foggy asks. His voice is a little too soft on the other end of the line. He doesn’t sound angry right now. Matt can’t hear heartbeats through phones, but Foggy’s was the steady metronome of Matt’s sleepless college nights and he can imagine it perfectly well. He conjures up the familiar tune of it. It just so happens to align with the neighbor’s, although the cadence is notably off. “Matt?”

Right. He’s on the phone. Matt feels absurd for forgetting that. “I’m just tired, Foggy,” he says because he has to say something, and no sooner do the words escape him that Matt realizes how true they are. He’s so _tired_. It weighs on him, pulling his limbs deeper into the glide of his sheets. He wants to go back to sleep. Why did Foggy call? What time is it?

“Ten twenty,” Foggy says, and Matt thinks he must have mumbled the question out loud. Or Foggy can read minds now. “Did you get any sleep last night? Or were you...” his voice lowers pointedly, “you know.”

Matt hadn’t been able to _you know_ last night. He realizes, slowly, that he hadn’t even managed to do more than shrug off his coat and take off his tie. Stick’s voice says _”Pathetic,”_ in his head. “I didn’t do that.” 

Foggy scoffs in—disbelief? Matt waits for the sting to follow, but he doesn’t really feel much about Foggy’s anger right now. Just tired. “I didn’t,” Matt repeats. He tries to be firmer. It just comes out weary. Matt winces. “I’m sorry, Foggy. I’ll be in soon, I just. I didn’t sleep well, I must have missed my alarm.”

The line is silent for long enough that Matt is starting to wonder if he accidentally hung up. There’s a sigh at the other end, finally, right when Matt’s about to thumb the redial button. “Okay,” Foggy says. His voice says it’s not okay, but Matt doesn’t call him out on it. He can’t. “See you soon?”

“Yeah,” Matt agrees, maybe a little too quickly. “Yes,” he repeats, going for steadier, probably failing. He follows the word with the arduous task of sitting upright. It’s exhausting. Foggy can probably hear the rustling of his sheets. “I’m getting up now. Want me to pick anything up for you? Ask Karen too, would you?”

“Yeah. I mean, nothing for me—hey!” Foggy’s voice gets a little distant. “Karen, Matt wants to know if you want him to grab you anything.” Karen’s response is just barely picked up by the phone’s mic. It’s too indistinct to make out individual words, but Matt can recognize the tone of it. “No, he just overslept,” Foggy is saying. More murmured sound from Karen. Foggy snorts, and then he’s huffing his laugh into his phone. “She says just you, preferably within the next half hour.” 

“You got it,” Matt replies automatically. “See you soon, Foggy.”

“Yup.” And just like that, the humor is gone from Foggy’s voice. The single word comes out clipped. He still doesn’t believe Matt hadn’t been out on his night job, then. No sting follows the sound of it, and Matt. Feels a little lost, without it. Lost and very, very tired. “See you.” 

The line goes dead. 

Matt rests his head in his hands. It’s another ten minutes before he can get his feet beneath him.


	2. Mint and Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt prepares for work. Nothing really goes smoothly.

_The mind controls the body,_ is Matt’s internal mantra, and he repeats it through the fog in his head as he stumbles through some semblance of his morning routine. 

If the process of waking up had been difficult, however, the process for preparing the day is.

Also difficult.

Matt manages. He always does, when the world starts feeling like it’s all coming at him through something thick and weighing. _The mind controls the body._ He manages to change, to fold yesterday’s clothing into a pile on his counter; it’s a blatant reminder to take _care of that, Murdock,_ because that’s what he gets for sleeping in his work outfit and creasing the material. He manages to brush his hair and he pops in a piece of mint gum to hide his morning breath—there’s no time to brush his teeth, he tells himself, he took too long getting out of bed for there to be time (a flimsy excuse)—and he uses the momentum to put on his socks and shoes, and then he’s out of the door.

Halfway on the walk to the firm, Matt’s regretting the gum. He can feel the plaque on his teeth, built up from a night without cleaning them and a morning the same. The mint is permeating, too, causing his nostrils to sting. It’s a relief against the stench of sewage and sweat and gasoline and breakfast eggs and cat urine that hangs in the air like a smog but it’s still overwhelming in its own right, and Matt ends up spitting it into some unknown corner because the flavor takes too long to fade and he thinks he might go crazy from it. 

It lingers on his tongue, in his saliva; clings relentlessly to the phlegm at the back of his throat. He can smell it intensely every time he exhales through his mouth. It’s sharp enough to burn, still.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Karen quips as Matt lets him into the office. Matt tilts his head in her direction and finds it in himself to grin in acknowledgement. It’s warm inside, mostly; he slips out of his coat and hangs it beside the door.

“Hey,” Foggy says from the threshold to his office, voice holding false offence, “isn’t that my line?”

“It’s his working title for me,” Matt says by way of agreement. He doesn’t need his cane here so it gets folded up and then hooked around his wrist by the strap. He pretends not to notice the weight of Foggy’s gaze as he makes his way into the kitchenette.

Karen laughs. Matt’s not sure, but the tones of it are… off, somehow. He wonders if it’s in his head. “Sorry, prince charming, I’ll leave the jabs at Matt’s bad sleeping habits to you. Coffee’s brewed, Matt, pot’s still in the machine.” Matt murmurs his thanks and fills his favorite mug—the ceramic is smooth and even, and it weighs satisfyingly in Matt’s hand, as though every aspect of it had been balanced near perfectly—then passes his hand out for the sugar. Super senses or not, some things aren’t glowing beacons. The scent of coffee is loud, rivaling the mint still hanging in his breath, and it’s hard to pick out the sweetness.

He’s tired. It’s difficult to focus.

“Foggy says you slept in?” Her tone is professionally curious, only barely relaying the genuine interest in her voice. It could be small talk. He thinks that odd note of it is back, though, somewhere. It might be the slight hitch in her lungs, like she wants to ask more, or maybe that she wants to ask something else. She doesn’t, though. Matt might be imagining things.

His fingers find the sugar, on the opposite side of its usual place. Matt doesn’t mind. “Yeah,” he nods. “Rough night, I guess. I didn’t manage to sleep until late, and then I must have slept right through my alarm.” He hadn’t, that much he remembers. He’d turned it off and rolled over and fallen back asleep.

“What’s ‘late’?” Foggy asks. There’s something skeptical in his voice that Matt thinks no one else would hear unless they’ve known him for a long while. The distrust should sting, but by the time it burrows through the fog in Matt’s head it only burns vaguely, more a background sensation than anything else. The ache of it fades quickly.

“I’m not sure,” he replies honestly. “Last I checked it’d been, um, three? I was awake for a while after that, though. Sorry for sleeping in, I—” His sentence cuts off abruptly, however, when his folded cane—still hanging from his right wrist—cracks unexpectedly into the side of a cup as he sweeps his arm out for the creamer. Matt startles hard and isn’t quick enough to grab the cup before it can crash onto the ground. He thinks Karen gasps a little, _“Oh!”_ but it’s lost beneath the piercing shatter of glass.

Matt’s hands jerk upwards, thoughtlessly reaching to cover his ears, but the noise is gone before he can complete the motion. His cane swings wildly on his wrist. Following the ring of broken glass against tile, things settle, as they are wont to do in the immediate aftermath of something startling. The room is silent for all of three seconds.

And then—

“Jesus, Matt.”

And,

“Oh, no. Hold on, let me get—Foggy, could you grab…?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

Karen’s up and moving towards Matt, Foggy’s grabbed the broom, and Matt just. Stands there. His arms are still lifted halfway up, hanging stupidly in front of him, cane swinging with less force than before. He feels numb. The sound of shattering glass still reverberates in his ears; it makes him think, absurdly, of mint. He doesn’t understand why.

There’s a hand on his arm, suddenly, and Matt jumps a little at the unexpected contact. Everything takes a moment to orientate and he realizes that it’s Karen. He hadn’t sensed her coming. “Sorry,” she says, tone genuinely apologetic.

“You’re fine,” Matt replies automatically. Karen guides him away from the shattered glass, helping him step over it despite that he’s wearing shoes and can do so just fine on his own. “I’m sorry,” he says instead of pointing that out. “I don’t know—wow. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry,” he repeats, this time directed towards Foggy as his friend starts to sweep up the shards.

“Hey, man, mistakes happen,” Foggy says casually. There’s something tight to his voice. It sticks to Matt’s side like a burr, digging in, prominent against the clinging numbness. It’s enough to shake Matt out of his ridiculous stupor and he—gently—pulls his arm from Karen’s grasp. “Maybe next time just, like, stick it on your pocket.”

“Yeah,” Matt agrees. The air swirls, displaced, as the broom pushes broken glass into a pile. “I—you don’t need to do that.” Matt steps forward, one hand outstretched. The sound of sweeping pauses. “It’s my mess, I can—”

Foggy snorts. “It’s fine, Matt. Besides, you might miss a shard. Can’t have someone cutting open their foot when they come in for a consultation.”

“We all wear close-toed shoes,” Matt points out.

“Not all of our clients do!” Foggy shoots back gamely. 

He has a point. Despite his many advantages, Matt’s still blind; glass interacts oddly with sound and with air, bounces strangely around it, and he might miss something. Given his luck, a client _would_ step on it. That’s not a lawsuit they can afford.

So he steps back, tucking his cane into his pocket, and waits until Foggy’s finished with sweeping up the glass before going to retrieve his coffee. Karen promises to bring him something he needs to review for a recent case and Matt nods, smiles, and goes to sit down. He doesn’t realize that he forgot the creamer, forgot to stir in the sugar, until he goes to take a sip and it tastes harsh and bitter on his tongue.

It helps wash away the sharp taste of mint, though, and Matt doesn’t think he has the energy in him to stand back up, so he just gently swirls the liquid before taking another sip.

Karen brings him the files.

It takes Matt longer than an hour to work through them.

 _The mind controls the body,_ he tells himself, tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (MY LAST NOTE WASN'T THAT LONG!! THIS ONE IS... A LITTLE LONGER!!!!! feel free to skip it!)
> 
> ah, matt, you fool. the mind is the issue here! your brain is sick! it's called depression!!!!! take a psych class, idiot, 
> 
> LAUGHS. i don't mean that, depression is difficult to recognize and difficult to work through, i should KNOW,
> 
> anyhow!!! an update! i,,, do not know if i will write more, but this came to me over the course of several days and i banged it out in bursts and sputters, so. here we are! matt is depressed, and foggy is a little too angry to notice, and for all that matt is shit at hiding his expressions like 90% of the time, karen hasn't quite picked up on anything. yet! i'm not sure what role she's going to play in this story, actually, (if i write more, that is) because i am so deeply in love with that woman and i do not want to blindside her and she deserves so so so much more than being a plot device for matt and foggy's relationship. she's important! she matters. i love her, guys, (starts to tear up) I LOVE HERRRRR
> 
> but yes. right. back on track. i did not proof this! i did not even read it over more than once after i completed it, and that readthrough was only to add the HTML for _emphasis purposes!!!!!_ if you spot any inconsistencies or, uh, typos, or somesuch thing, let me know! as it stands, comments are my lifeblood and kudos are the white blood cells that defend me from the illness of dejected despair. or something. that, uh, got away from me. my point stands, however! i'm treating kudos like youtube likes! there's nothing wrong with desiring an indicator of appreciation, thank you very much!!1111 
> 
> but, yes, in all seriousness; if you're enjoying this, _genuinely_ the best way to get more is to drop a kudos. comments act as further indication of appreciation and as higher motivators, but as someone who is almost constantly low-energy and often unable to muster what it takes to leave a comment, i understand! just do what _you_ can! take care of yourself!!!! i love you!!!!


End file.
